Aloes aloes

As you know from this post published in mid-January, I've been wishing for more sun and warmer temperatures so the flowers on our aloes would finally open up. This winter hasn't been particular cold—only one night where the temperature briefly dropped below freezing—but we've had a surprising number of gray days in the 40s. No sun and hence no warmth from the fireball in the sky threw everything, not just the aloes, into a seemingly interminable holding pattern.

Finally, this past week has been sunny and warm—nicely warm. And to everyone's delight, our aloes are responding. Take a look!

Aloe 'Tangerine', planted just two years ago, has turned into a real beauty. It's thought to be a cross between Aloe arborescens and Aloe ferox.

Cactus Garden at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

Cacti are a staple of the plant life at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum (ASDM), seeing how it's smack in the middle of the Sonora Desert. As a visitor, you have plenty of opportunity to see cacti no matter where you go in the park. But there's once place no cactophile should miss: the Cactus Garden. It's small, essentially just a loop trail, but it has almost 140 different species.

The Cactus Garden was dedicated in 1965 in honor of John Haag, curator of plants at the ASDM from 1957 to 1959. Haag founded the Tucson Cactus Club (now the Tucson Cactus and Succulent Society) in 1960, and volunteers from the TCSS have helped maintain and improve it ever since. Here is an interesting article about the 50th anniversary of the Cactus Garden and how it has evolved over the years.

Just like the Agave Garden (the subject of a future post), the Cactus Garden is destination I return to on every visit to the ASDM. Not only is it full of special plants, they're staged beautifully. Here is an interactive map of the plantings.

Opuntia engelmannii and Ferocactus diguetii

Potted perfection at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

An after-Christmas road trip to Arizona seems to have become a tradition for me. And part of the tradition is a visit to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum (ASDM) west of Tucson. You'd think I'd get tired of it, but it's like catching up with a good friend: many things are the same, but there's always something new and surprising.

I'll have separate posts on the Cactus Garden and the Agave Garden at the ASDM, the latter having undergone a complete overhaul in the last few years. This post focuses on the plantings at the cluster of buildings in the northeast corner of the park: the Ironwood Art Gallery, Ironwood Terraces Restaurant, and Baldwin Education Building. The stucco walls are a great backdrop for potted specimens, as you will see below. The landscaping here is a great match for the contemporary architecture of the buildings. If I had a house in Tucson, I'd be tempted to simply recreate this design. It's simple, clean, and cool.

Ocotillo (Fouquieria splendens) against the gray stucco exterior of the Baldwin Education Building

John Miller's aloe wonderland in Oakland

John Miller is the president of the Institute for Aloe Studies (IAS), a non-profit organization dedicated to the study and conservation of the genus Aloe. The IAS propagates a large variety of aloe species, many of them hard to find, and sells them through their web site. The plants are grown in a greenhouse at the Oakland Zoo and in John's personal garden.

I saw John's garden for the first time in December 2018, and this January I was lucky enough to visit on two different occasions. This post combines photos I took two weeks apart.

Bi-colored Aloe ferox [South Africa], a real beauty

John has a ½ acre hillside lot with panoramic vistas of Oakland and San Francisco Bay. His aloe collection is one of the largest in the country and includes many rare species from areas other than South Africa (Zimbabwe, Uganda, Ethiopia, Madagascar). John has seen many species in habitat, most recently on a trip to Eritrea and Ethiopia.

Oakland has the ideal climate for growing aloes since winter lows rarely fall below freezing and summer highs rarely climb beyond the 90s. In contrast, Davis, just a little over an hour away, is colder in the winter and hotter in the summer, making gardening just a bit more challenging.

Visiting Jeff Moore's Arid Adaptations Nursery in Tucson, Arizona

My first Tucson stop on my recent Arizona trip was at Arid Adaptions Nursery at the foot of the Tucson Mountains. Owner Jeff Moore grows a wide variety of succulents on his 3-acre property—far more species than I'd realized. He sells them at farmers markets in the Tucson area, to private collectors, and to wholesalers in Tucson and Phoenix. (To clear up potential confusion, Arid Adaptation's Jeff Moore and Jeff Moore of Solana Succulents Nursery in north San Diego County are two different people and not related.)

As I was driving to Jeff's place, the sky was filled with the big puffy clouds I so love:

Getting closer:

All our aloes want is some ☀️

The first two weeks of January have been unpleasantly damp and chilly here in the Sacramento Valley. Today, the sun has been making a valiant effort to warm things up, but a thin layer of clouds is keeping temperatures in check.

All I want is a few days of unadulterated sunshine. I'm not alo(n)e in this: Our aloes have been in a holding pattern for weeks now. They need a good spell of afternoon highs in the 60s to kick the flowering action into high gear. On the positive side—at least as far as aloe flowers are concerned—we haven't had enough rain to cause the ends of the immature inflorescences to rot. In fact, our rainfall has been modest since the official start of winter.

Here are the aloes in our garden that are waiting for warmer weather. Without it, they'll continue to sulk. And so will I.

Aloe 'Tangerine'

Tohono Chul Park: one of Tucson's must-see destinations for succulent lovers

One of the places I visit regularly when I'm in Tucson, Arizona is Tohono Chul Park. It doesn't have the name recognition of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and because of that it's far less overrun. In fact, every time I've been there, I've been one of only a handful of visitors (the fact that I usually go right when they open at 8 a.m. might have something to do with it).

There are many reasons I like Tohono Chul. It's in Tucson, one of my favorite places in the world, and it combines both the natural desert environment and man-made elements, such as a series of compact demo gardens showcasing desert-appropriate landscaping in residential settings. And it has a small but well-stocked nursery which offers everything from travel-sized souvenir cacti for tourists to unusual succulents for collectors to perennials, shrubs and trees for local homeowners.

I've taken so many photos of Tohono Chul over the years that I'm afraid I might begin to repeat myself—not that that's an issue unless you look at my old posts side by side. But it's very easy for me to get swept away by the beauty of the place. When that happens and I'm in the “zone,” I let myself go with the flow and respond to what I see before me. Getting lost like that is the thing I look forward to the most when I visit the desert.

Speaking of the desert, this quote by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the author of The Little Prince, perfectly expresses how I feel. Saint-Exupéry was referring to the Sahara, not the Sonoran Desert, but the magnetic pull is the same.

Plant haul from my December 2019 Arizona trip

One of my great passions in life is traveling. Don't get me wrong—I love being at home, too, but the pull to see other places never quite goes away. In German, there's a great word for this: Fernweh. It literally means “far-ache.” The “ache” part is the same as in “toothache:” a pain that is persistent and all-encompassing. The German language definitely has a knack for coining simple words that express complex emotions!

While I enjoy travel no matter what form it takes, I do prefer driving over flying. When you look at the photos below, you'll understand why. Other people bring home coffee mugs or tea towels as souvenirs, I come back with plants and rocks.

Trunk of our Toyota Prius after my recent Arizona trip. The bare spot on the left was where my clothes bag had been.

Succulents and More on Instagram

Some of you may be following Succulents and More on Instagram already. If you aren't, below are some examples of what you're missing. These are images I posted on Instagram during and after my recent Arizona trip. Some of them may eventually make it into regular blog posts, but most will only appear on Instagram.

My Instagram user name is succulentsandmore.

See you there!

Highlights from my 2019 after-Christmas Arizona trip

I just got back from another awesome after-Christmas desert road trip with a couple of thousand photos—memories that will sustain me until next Christmas when I'll do it all over again.

OK, in the interest of full disclosure, I will admit that a few plants and rocks came home with me, too. And another metal mariachi musician, a younger brother to the two that have taken up residence in our front yard.

I'll have many posts in the weeks and months to come. For now, here's a random jumble of snapshots that capture the highlights of my trip. Consider it an appetizer.

Highway 247, western San Bernardino County, California; my trusty steed on the right